Joint Legislative Audit

Good morning and welcome to the joint oversight hearing of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, the Joint Committee on Emergency Management, and the Assembly Committee on Emergency Management.

Today we will be discussing the findings and recommendations identified by the State Auditor, who is here in the audit report titled California Is Not Adequately Prepared to Protect Its Most Vulnerable Residents from Natural Disasters. Quite a title.

This audit was published in December 2020, but its content and recommendations are clearly still relevant and worthy of further review by our committees. I know we all looked on in horror and with great sympathy when the fires occurred recently in Los Angeles County, both the Eaton and the Palisades fire. I am proud to represent the district where the Eaton fires occurred and there has been much devastation as people have seen closely and far.

Unfortunately, the pain and suffering continues for so many of our residents throughout the state and in LA County, Altadena, Pacific Palisades, Malibu, Pasadena and Los Angeles in particular, there are certainly not these cities and communities are certainly not the first cities and towns in California to experience horrendous fires or natural disasters.

Unfortunately, the audit that we will discuss today is focused on three equally awful and tragic fires that occurred in 2017 and 18. The Campfire in Butte County tragically killed 86 Californians and destroyed approximately 19,000 structures.

The Sonoma Complex fire in and around Santa Rosa killed 24 Californians and the Thomas Fire in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties resulted in one death and burned a little over a thousand structures.

We are certainly thankful for emergency responders who risk their lives to protect us, the lives of our neighbors, and the homes that have so much personal meaning to us. Those first responders, I think we can all agree, are heroes. Despite heroic efforts, fires have killed many Californians.

Unfortunately, often the deceased have been Californians with access or functional needs, be it older adults or people with disabilities, chronic conditions, or limited English proficiency. The audit and our hearing today will be focused on these vulnerable Californians. Everyone, of course, is vulnerable during fires and natural disasters.

But older adults, those with chronic conditions or temporary injuries, and those with transportation needs and limited English are even more vulnerable during these disasters. They are disproportionately impacted and put at risk during these events.

As the audit report points out, our state's Emergency Management System designates counties and local governments as those primarily responsible for for emergency preparedness and response. Unfortunately, the three counties included in this audit, counties of Butte, Sonoma and Ventura, were not able to accept our invitation to participate in today's hearing and discuss the results.

That said, we are glad to have the Governor's Office of Emergency Services Our California State Auditor, as well as the Commission on Aging, the ARC of California, and and the California Rural Legal Assistance foundation here with us to discuss this important matter today.

As we discuss, we will discuss the audit findings as well as the State Auditor's recommendations, which are very important on how the state can better prepare for fires and natural disasters and how we can protect the most vulnerable communities who are impacted by these disasters.

My main goal today is to learn what we as a Legislature can do to assist Californians during fires and natural disasters. Thank you again for everyone for being here. And just a few housekeeping matters before I turn it over to Chair Ransom for an opening statement. I ask that panels keep their presentations to the time allocated.

It's approximately 15 minutes for the State Auditor's presentation, approximately 10 minutes for the Office of Emergency Services, and approximately 5 minutes for each party on their third panel following each panel Member. Members will have time to ask questions. We will Reserve time for public comment after the last panel.

Each Member of the public will have two minutes to provide their perspective on the topic of this hearing. Lastly, we will not permit conduct that disrupts, disturbs or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of today's proceedings. Members, any questions on any of that? Seeing none. I'm actually going to turn it over to our Vice Chair, Senator Laird, for any opening comments.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the opportunity. And at the time these three fires that were audited happened, I was California Secretary for Natural Resources and I had CAL FIRE. And there were instructive moments in each of these events that reflect on today's topic.

If you look at the fire in the Napa area that burned out of Napa into Sonoma, it was a matter of six or seven hours that it went almost 15 miles and burned a residential neighborhood, jumping a major freeway in the City of Santa Rosa.

And it was such that when I visited with the Governor and our Senators, that fire a few days later, the firefighters described how they went door to door as the fire was sweeping through the neighborhood. And if they saw cars in the driveway, they pounded on the door.

If nobody answered the door, they went around to the windows because it was the middle of the night night. And that was the level of awareness that was given to people as their neighborhood was. Was burning down. And it led to many questions about alerts and alarms. And in the paradise fire.

I was up there a few times in the days after the fire, and one time I'm with the CAL FIRE chief and we were driving by a huge shopping center that had a large Safeway. Everything is burned down but one drugstore, One drugstore was just standing.

And I turned to the CAL FIRE chief and said, talk to me. And he said, well, this fire was going at 60 acres a minute. It raced through the entire town in 60 minutes. And we had three firefighting units and we had over 100 people trapped here.

And so we moved them into that drugstore, surrounded it with the, the equipment, and we defended that drugstore to save the people when that happened. And he said, our first priority is always just get people out. That's what we tell them. And we might have to rethink it after how this fire unfolded.

And so that's what makes this audit very prescient for the things that just happened in Los Angeles. And I had a rather egregious battery storage fire in my district a few weeks ago that called into question also adequate planning and for the people that are around it.

So, you know, when I first saw this, I knew the audit had been done five years ago, although I think during the pandemic. So we weren't in a position to, to, to hear it. But I think if there was ever a time that it was ripe for discussion, this is it. So I thank the chair for agendizing it and I look forward to the discussion.

Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. For, for that perspective, which I think is perfect. Leading into testimony, Assembly Member Ransom, who is the Chair of our Assembly Committee on Emergency Management. Do you have any opening statements?

Yes, I do. Thank you, chair. So good morning and welcome everyone here. I appreciate this opportunity. I'm going to just start with four years ago, the State Auditor issued a stark warning. California was not prepared to protect its most vulnerable residents even in a disaster. That report exposed critical life threatening gaps.

Counties lacked evacuation plans, emergency alerts were inaccessible, and there were no planning actions taken to specifically assist seniors, people with disabilities or non English speakers in order to escape a disaster.

So recognizing these risks, the Legislature passed laws directing Cal OES to issue guidance, strengthen emergency planning and ensure communities were better prepared to so the counties can consider vulnerable residents in their emergency plans. Yet today we confront the same harsh realities as we just heard from Senator Laird and assemblymember Harbiedian.

California is still not protecting the most vulnerable residents from disasters. So this was tragically underscored by the recent Palisades and Eaton wildfires, which cost even more vulnerable residents in those fires. The Los Angeles Times reported that of the 17 lives lost in the Eaton fire, 70% were black, 64% were women. And the median age was 77.

And at least a third of those had impairments that impacted their mobility, which is very important as we consider, you know, how we plan our emergency Systems. Of the 12 lives lost in the Palisades fire, more than half were above the age of 68 years old, and many suffered from mobility issues in that fire as well.

So we need to discuss what has changed and what still needs to change. Cal OES was directed to address those gaps, and where are we in those changes in that direction? Counties were directed to address the gaps in their plans as well. Are those counties truly ready? Are we still relying on outdated plans?

And if Cal OES and our counties are meeting our legislative requirements, what gaps still remain to be fixed? It's imperative that we all work together, Cal OES, the counties, and the Legislature, so that when the next wildfire, earthquake, or flood hits our state, we don't fail.

We need to make sure that we can help the most vulnerable people. The only acceptable outcome is a system that ensures that no one is left behind when disaster strikes. So I look forward to this discussion. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Senator Ransom, for those comments. State Auditor Parks, welcome. Good morning. Time is now yours.

Good morning, Chair Harabedian. Chair Ransom. Good morning. My name's Grant Parks. I'm the State Auditor of California. Thank you for inviting me today to discuss this important topic of ensuring that California's emergency management plans address the needs of our most vulnerable residents.

The tragic fires in Los Angeles put into sharp focus the need to ensure the state's emergency plans address the unique needs of the elderly, those with limited or no English proficiency, those with mobility or sensory disabilities, and those who may act, those who may lack access to their own transportation.

I know that some of you represent districts that were directly affected by the wildfires, and for that, you have my office's deepest condolences. I'm here to summarize today the findings and corrective actions taken in response to an audit we issued on this important topic.

As a result of an audit approved by the Joint Legislative Audit Committee and requested by Assembly Members Lackey and Gallagher In December 2019, my office released a report titled California is not adequately prepared to protect the most vulnerable residents from natural disasters.

For this audit, we we were asked to review at the state and local level, preparedness plans for the safe and efficient evacuation of residents with access and functional needs. In other words, those residents who are the most vulnerable during a natural disaster.

Therefore, our audit included a review of the guidance provided by Cal OES and three counties that had, at the time of our audit, recently experienced natural disasters, and I know the chair already went through which counties we visited and which disasters those were.

To summarize at a high level the audit's results for the three counties we visited, we noted that each had not fully implemented guidance provided by FEMA or Cal OES with respect to issuing emergency alerts and then evacuating and sheltering those with access and functional needs.

In some cases, the emergency plans we expected to see at the counties either did not exist or were outdated or were in draft form at the time of our audit. Further, we found that the counties could not demonstrate that they had solicited the perspectives and input of groups representing these vulnerable populations when creating their emergency plans.

At the state level, we found that Cal OES at the time of our audit demonstrated some weaknesses in the guidance and the information it was providing to local jurisdictions to assist with their planning. Specifically, Cal OES did not highlight best practices for assisting those with access and functional needs in the state plan as required by law.

In our view, Cal OES also provided limited and at times difficult to follow guidance to local jurisdictions regarding how they should coordinate and communicate with those who have access and functional needs.

Further, we noted that Cal OES had difficulty completing after action reports in a timely manner following a disaster to ensure that the lessons learned were broadly disseminated across local jurisdictions throughout the state so that they could be better prepared for the next disaster.

I'll briefly expand on our observations at the counties and Cal OES before getting into the more specific recommendations and the status of those recommendations at the county level. A key element of emergency preparedness is having a complete and updated plan. However, none of the three counties that we visited had complete and updated plans.

For example, while Sonoma and Ventura had emergency operation plans before their respective fires, both lacked plans for issuing alerts and evacuating residents. Ventura at the time also lacked a sheltering plan, and Sonoma only had a draft sheltering plan.

And while Butte did have an emergency operations plan that we felt was relatively complete, it hadn't been updated in seven years. While guidance from FEMA states that it's critical to update these plans at least every two years.

So against the backdrop of missing or outdated plans, Butte and Sonoma counties did not send emergency alert messages in our view that aligned with best practices. For example, Butte's emergency alerts did not identify that the message was coming from a credible source such as a governmental agency.

Sonoma's message didn't indicate what the nature of the threat was in this case a fire. Further, Butte and Sonoma's messages could not reach all residents with cell phones. Instead of using FEMA's Wireless Emergency Alert system that can reach cell phones in a given area, Butte and Sonoma instead sent alerts to landlines and to individuals who had pre registered their cell phones to receive alerts.

However, between 50 to 60% of those calls failed to connect, leaving large numbers of residents in Butte and Sonoma unable to receive the warnings and the alerts.

Butte attempted to use the WEA system, but the messages failed to send through given their software program, which was an issue that Butte would have identified beforehand had it tested that software prior to using it for the first time during a natural disaster.

Additionally, our audit found that none of the three counties we reviewed sent crucial alert messages in languages other than English. With varying explanations as to why, Butte indicated that they were rushed to issue alerts, and Sonoma indicated that the emergency coordinator was out of town and issued alerts remotely with access to translated messages.

And just for context, we noted that limited English residents accounted for roughly 10 to 14% of the populations in those counties. We also saw weaknesses in county planning by not considering the input of communities and organizations that represent residents with access and functional needs.

For example, none of the counties we spoke with had included those communities in their planning efforts, including those with limited English proficiency.

We also spoke during the audit with several community organizations in each of those counties and many of whom provided direct assistance to residents with access and functional needs during the fires, and the majority of those organizations also reported to my audit team that the counties had not consulted with them either.

This lack of planning may have negatively affected the three counties ability to to assist their vulnerable residents. None of the counties had fully assessed how many people would need evacuation assistance.

Based on our review of after action reports and interviews with county officials, all three counties were challenged when trying to provide evacuation assistance for vulnerable residents, and all three counties cited challenges in obtaining resources to support people with access and functional needs, such as in emergency shelters with accessible beds and cots and showers, and durable medical equipment.

At the state level, we found that Cal OES guidance and oversight of local planning was limited. At the time of our audit, Cal OES main role with respect to local emergency planning was to provide guidance and informational resources to assist local planning efforts.

However, we noted some weaknesses in the guidance that OES was provided, the first being that Cal EOES was not addressing the needs of the AFN community in the state plan.

It's been a requirement since 2013 that state law required Cal OES to include best practices for local governments when evacuating people with disabilities and others with access and functional needs. At that time in 2013, the Legislature found that too little of the state plan was dedicated to senior citizens and the new needs of people with disabilities.

But in response, Cal OES did not update the state plan and instead decided to post best practices on a separate website not mentioned or referenced in the state plan.

Our review of this website found that it was not user friendly, contained over 250 links to different websites and documents, with many of those links having vague titles like Feeling Safe, Being Safe, with no description or links to tell the readers what they could expect to find find in this documentation.

We also found challenges with OES not developing model guidelines for establishing disaster registries.

Since 1991, Cal OES has been responsible for developing guidelines on the use of disaster registries, which are voluntary listings for which people with access and functional needs can sign up so that first responders can potentially contact them and ensure they've been evacuated during a disaster.

Instead, Cal OES's guidance stated that disaster registries have proven unworkable and emphasized concerns with their use, providing little advice to jurisdictions on how to actually use and manage them.

However, during the audit, we noted that Butte, one of the counties that we included in the audit, actually used disaster registries, and it, like other counties who may use registries, likely could have benefited from the guidance that Cal OES might have provided.

We also found that Cal OES's library of alert messages in foreign languages was also not user friendly. State law requires that Cal OES develop a library of emergency alert messages in widely used other languages.

However, at the time of Our Audit, Cal OES's non English message library did not include translations back into English, which would help local jurisdictions know which foreign language message to use for a particular disaster. And further, some of these messages were not adaptable to various emergencies.

For example, all three of Cal OES's shelter in place messages at the time for hazardous material releases instead of for other kinds of hazardous events. And finally, we noted that as I mentioned before, Cal OES has not issued after action reports timely.

While state law at the time required Cal OES to complete after Action reports within 120 days after a disaster and to make these reports available to all interested emergency management and public safety organizations.

We found that Cal OES struggled to complete after action reports in the period of January 2014 through December 2018, there were 65 proclaimed natural disasters. There were required an after action report and Cal OES had not completed reports for 50 seconds.

Seven of those instances and at the time of our audit in December 2019. The most recent disaster for which Cal OES had completed an after action report occurred in February 2015 and the after action report was not completed until May 2019, so more than four years after the event occurred.

Further, during the audit we noted that Cal OES policy is not to broadly share its outcome action reports publicly or with other local emergency managers and instead requires local jurisdictions to request these reports.

However, we believe Cal OES could do more to broadly distribute these lessons learned following disasters so local jurisdictions can better learn through the experiences of others. So now I'll turn to some of the recommendations we had in the audit. We had recommendations to a variety of different groups, to the Legislature, to the counties and to Cal oes.

For the Legislature, we had two recommendations that really focused on two areas. Two Issue Areas the first issue area for the Legislature is we thought that there was value in directing Cal OES to create a state level review of local emergency planning.

Our recommendation suggested that Cal OES should be directed to review 10 local jurisdictions Emergency plans every year to ensure consistency with FEMA best practices and as part of these reviews to also include representatives of groups from the AFN community.

The second issue for the Legislature that we recommended was improving state level planning and disseminating lessons learned directing Cal OES to involve representative of these access and functional needs groups when developing the state emergency plan and also developing guidance and also directing Cal OES to assess local jurisdictions after action reports and then broadly disseminate and summarize the lesson learned to other jurisdictions.

In response, the Legislature enacted a variety of bills. I'll just name some of them that addresses, in our view, many of the recommendations that we had from this report. AB 3267 from 2020 required Cal OES to coordinate with access and functional need populations when it updates its state emergency plan and to complete after action reports within 180 days.

AB 2386 from 2020 required Cal OES to annually review a minimum of 10 county emergency plans to determine if they conform to FEMA recommendations and Assembly Bill 580 from 2021 required counties to send copies of all of their emergency plans to Cal OEs by 2022 and also requires that Cal OES continue to review these plans with the goal of making sure that every county has been reviewed by January 2028.

We also note that AB 580 required the Director of Cal OES to appoint representatives of access and functional need populations to serve on the various committees at Cal OES related to the emergency management system at the counties, we made essentially the same three recommendations, and I'll summarize them. The first was update your emergency management plans.

The second one was establish local ordinances defining a recurring update schedule for these plans. And the third recommendation was essentially making sure that you are consulting with community groups that represent groups with access and functional needs. In response to these three recommendations, the county's responses varied in their willingness to implement.

Generally, they did provide evidence that they updated their plans. They were, I would say, lukewarm on the idea of developing ordinances to set specific schedules for updating their plans or for involving community groups. For Cal OES, we made three recommendations.

The first is that Cal OES needs to issue guidance about establishing disaster registries and guidance on evacuating people with access and functional needs. Secondly, the Cal OES needs to improve the ease of use of its non English emergency alerts.

And third, the Cal OES needs to make its emergency planning guidance and resources more accessible through restructuring and improving its access and functional needs library page. We've determined that Cal OES has fully implemented two of our recommendations so far and has partially implemented the third.

Since the audit, Cal OES has provided us with documentation that it has completed alert messages in 18, the most commonly spoken languages in California. It has expanded its style guide and glossary, along with appropriate translations, and has updated its functional needs library, which we've determined fully implements that recommendation.

And related to the remaining recommendation at Cal OES, Cal OES has submitted relevant guidance documents to my office for review, and it's in the process of incorporating it into the state emergency plan. The reason why that recommendation is not fully implemented at this time is because the state emergency plan has not been finalized yet.

It's still in a draft form. So with that, joining me at the table is Mr. Bob Harris. He was the project manager and principal Auditor on the assignment at the time. And both of us would be happy to answer any of your questions.

Thank you, Auditor Parks, your timing is literally impeccable. 15 minutes on the.Members. Any questions for Mr. Parks or Mr. Harris? And while we look, I will jump in with just a few. I think that there was a shocking.

There was a lot of shocking facts in the audit, one of which was that there weren't any in the three counties notifications sent out to the communities in any language other than English. And we just saw similar things happen, unfortunately, in recent fires with a, I would say, lack of effectiveness of emergency notifications.

What was the response from the Three counties on this critical issue about the language barriers in the notifications. I know that you had mentioned in your opening remarks that one of the emergency management personnel were out of town.

Obviously we should have systems and checks and balances so that if someone is out of town, that shouldn't affect the substance of an emergency notification. But what was the response of the three counties on this critical issue?

Mr. Chair, thank you. My name is Bob Harris, an audit principal with the State Auditor's office. So the county perspectives varied. As the State Auditor indicated earlier for Ventura in the Thomas fire, their messages did eventually start going out in languages other than English, but it took 10 days.

So it took them quite a while to get around to issuing messages in languages other than in English. They had told us that, although in hindsight the need to do so is evident, that they had never done so before. That was their explanation. And the explanations at Sonoma and Butte have already been provided by the State Auditor.

But again, in summary, you know, Butte felt pressed to do so under obviously very extreme circumstances in a limited amount of time. And Sonoma attested that the individual sending messages was out of town, sending those messages remotely without the access to the resources they would need in order to provide those messages in languages other than English.

The key best practice that the counties were not following need and need to be following. Right. Is having prescripted messages already translated that they can sort of just take off the shelf. Right. Even if you're out of town and have access to those resources so that those messages are pre translated and ready to go.

Since those emergencies, all three counties have. We did see this during the audit. Right. Subsequent to those emergencies we were reviewing did start sending messages in languages other than English. So we did see improvement even during the audit.

Mr. DeMaio, I'm going to ask one more and then I'm going to go to you. Thank you for that. I think that my only other question at this point, and then I'll hand it over to Assemblymember DeMaio, is we talked about the response by the Legislature to your recommendations and really we have to think about real world effectiveness of those and implementations.

I think that one of the things that I can kind of bring to the table is as Assembly Member Ransom noted, many of the deaths, a disproportionate amount of the deaths in the Eaton fire were actually folks from the AFN community, older residents, folks that had disabilities.

And so I guess the simple observation is from my perspective, a lot of these measures that the Legislature thankfully passed don't seem to be translating in keeping people with these vulnerabilities safe. Because what we just saw in these fires that just happened were again, a disproportionate effect. And as I noted earlier, a real problem with emergency notifications.

You know, half of Altadena, where the Eaton fire was, didn't get emergency notifications until hours after the fire started, literally when the fire was already ripping through their neighborhood. So what is your assessment of the actual effectiveness of some of these legislative measures and do we need to do more?

I think my commentary there would be, as we noted, or as I noted in my comments, one of the, I think, positive changes that the Legislature did following our audit is it required Cal OES to review essentially the quality of the emergency planning at this local level and that that review of county plans also include perspectives of AFN groups reviewing the adequacy of emergency alerts and sheltering plans and what have you.

And so whether or not the plans are effective or not, I think are in part a function of Has Los Angeles, for example, submitted their emergency plan to Cal OES? Given the statute that was passed by the Legislature, what was Cal OES thoughts on the plans that LA submitted and what kind of feedback did Cal OES provide?

And the AFN groups that were supporting Cal OES, what kind of feedback did they provide to Los Angeles and other groups based on the plans that were submitted for Cal OES's review? And so that wasn't the focus of this audit.

Obviously, the LA fires happened subsequent to our audit, but those are some of the thoughts that go through my mind. Given the oversight structure that the Legislature has now imposed and the review role that Cal OES has, that would be one of the first places that I would start to look.

Appreciate that, we will hear from Cal OES. I would like that perspective as well. Mr. DeMaio

Thank you very much. First, I guess never too late to have a hearing. This audit was released in 2019, showing severe deficiencies with the way the Governor's Office of Emergency Services was handling compliance with state law as it relates to working with counties on emergency preparedness and notification. And here we are in 2025, finally digging deep.

I appreciate the fact that the chair has selected this important topic. It's very timely. I know a number of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle are very interested in raising the bar. And raising the bar means holding folks accountable and shining a light and having transparency.

So I want to simplify this very complex, lengthy audit because I think there's some really good stuff in here and alarming stuff for us to demand action on for the auditors. Your audit found that our practices at the local level for emergency notifications are not compliant with state law. Is that correct?

We are not complying with the letter and spirit of state law in terms of what we would like local governments to prepare for, particularly as it relates to vulnerable populations. Is that correct? You cited a law, but passed in 2014. It's 11 years later and we're still seeing counties not compliant.

So non compliance with state law is what the audit uncovered on Emergency Management. Mr. Auditor, do you think that lives are put at increased risk if we're not compliant with some of the provisions in state law? Some of the best practices that you've identified, do we have a higher risk profile by not doing some of the things that the counties have failed to do?

I think the state is in a better position if they are doing the things that we outlined in our audit. No amount of Planning gives you 100% assurance that you're going to.

Mr. Parks, is your microphone on? I'm sorry.

Sorry. No amount of planning will guarantee success during a disaster, but I think a lack of planning is a contributing factor to failure during a disaster.

In other words, we have a higher risk profile if we don't do best practices. And God forbid, people could die if we don't do things right according to best practices. That's why you have best practices. I mean, we wouldn't be imposing regulations if there wasn't some sort of benefit to the community. Right? Okay, so this question.

My school districts in my district have been threatened by Governor Gavin Newsom for not complying with state law on personal pronouns and controversial curriculum on sex ed topics. They have been sued by the Attorney General multiple times. They've been threatened by state bureaucrats multiple times with very sternly warded letters.

Can you think of any time when the Office of Emergency Services contacted one of these local governments since your audit to say you're not compliant with state law and best practices relating to emergency preparedness notifications? Can you think of any time when they have actually called out, contacted a county government for non compliance?

You found non compliance in your audit in the past five years since this audit was issued, do you. Are you aware of any such instance?

So Cal OES's role, as we talk about in the audit, is to review plans, to provide information and resources. They don't have a role to approve plans. It's a local.

But they have a role to warn. To shine a light

To warn. and to shine A light. And to provide feedback

The Governor has tweeted a number of times demanding that school board Members take action to comply with state law and guidance. Are you aware of any tweets by the Governor on emergency preparedness compliance on issues raised in your audit? Any tweets at all in the last five years? Because he's a prolific tweeter.

When he wants to be on school issues, there's no problem threatening school board Members. Are you aware of any such tweets on emergency preparedness issues outlined in your audit?

Our work was focused on the audit that we performed.

That's okay. My office actually scoured his Twitter account, both his political one and his state account. We could find nothing. Finally, we searched the docket. I just want to see if we missed anything. Has our illustrious Attorney General, who has been suing school board Members and school districts, threatening parents?

Has our Attorney General brought any litigation against a county for non compliance with state law on emergency notifications as outlined in your audit? Any litigation against. Because he's apparently willing to sue school districts at a drop of a hat. Any litigation to force them to comply? To protect vulnerable populations. I'm using words in your audit. Vulnerable populations.

People that are put at higher risk for losing their lives if they are not given proper notification. Any lawsuits by our Attorney General?

Not that I am aware of offhand, but.

But he has filed five against President Trump in the last six weeks. I just wanted to make sure because I was hoping maybe something was going to be done on your audit that was issued six years ago. I'm glad that the Legislature is doing something. We're holding an oversight hearing today. Six years later and finding that not a whole lot has changed in the past six years. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. DeMaio. Any questions from the Senators at this point? We can always. Mr. Parks and Mr. Harris, are you going to be sticking around? I know we're going to move on to the next panel, but just in case more questions come about.

We can either remain here or sit back down and come up whenever

You can I think you can remain just. We will now see. No questions. Go to Cal OES. Appreciate you being here and if you could keep it to 10 minutes, that'd be great, but obviously give you more wiggle room if you need it. So. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Members, for having us here today. My name is Lori Nezhura. I'm the Deputy Director of Planning, Preparedness and Prevention at Cal OES. I'm here today with Vance Taylor, chief of the Cal OES Office of Access and Functional needs.

Since the 2017 wildfires and this audit being discussed today, Cal OES has implemented many resources, trainings, planning guidance, advisory committees and response capabilities for the state and local governments to strengthen their emergency planning, response and recovery for access and Functional needs or AFN communities.

So we hope our our comments today will demonstrate the compliance that the Auditor has attested to and also additional activities that we've engaged in. I'll hand it over to Vance to begin.

Thank you and thank you Members of the Committee. As Deputy Director Nezhura Said, I'm Vance Taylor. I'm the Chief of the Office of Access and Functional needs at Cal OES. But recognizing the need to ensure we're consulting representatives with access to functionalities throughout the state, Galloway has created AFN State Advisory Committee that happened in 2020.

We meet on a quarterly or ad hoc basis and the State AFN Advisory Committee provides valuable feedback on calibrate's guidance plans, trainings, projects and initiatives. We engage with the Committee during emergencies and disasters. They help amplify messaging, provide preparedness resources and identify and address unmet needs.

The AFN State Advisory Committee is comprised of Executive leadership from a broad group of community based organizations that includes groups like California State Council on Developmental Disabilities, Disability Rights, California California foundation for Independent Living Centers, Communities Actively Living Independent and Free, the Alzheimer's Association, Leading Age California, the California Council of the Blind, the ARC of California, NORCAL Services for Deaf and Hard of Hearing, and the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund.

We are immensely grateful to this group for their eagerness, their engagement and their expert insights. In 2022, Governor Newsom directed Cal OES to bring together all agencies in the Administration that play a role in providing services to the AFN community. From that initial convening we formed what's now referred to as the Priorities Population Task Force.

It's the mission of the Task Force to coordinate state resources to identify and address unmet needs, to close gaps, ensure comprehensive operational preparedness and response in support of Californians at greatest need and risk during emergencies and disasters.

The Task Force focuses on individuals who are homeless or unsheltered, individuals with visible and non visible disabilities, older adults, individuals who are medically high risk, individuals residing in medical and non medical congregate facilities, and individuals from the farm worker community. We've got over 20 plus Members of the state family there. That's different departments and agencies. I won't list them all, but can reference them if you'd like at a later point.

The task Force itself is activated in response to every major flooding, extreme heat, wildfire, power outage, winter snow, tropical storm disaster since September 2022 in recent disasters of task force that's focused on lines of efforts such as identifying and addressing unmet needs, ensuring jurisdictions are providing free or Low cost accessible transportation services that are accessible to assist with evacuation and movement needs, amplifying messaging about signing up for alerts, and the importance of developing personal emergency evacuation plans.

With regards to guidance. My office has developed many guidance documents for state and local agencies over the last five years, but included within those are integrated access and functional needs within the emergency planning process best practices for stakeholder inclusion, inclusive planning blueprints for trusting access and functional needs at mass testing and vaccination sites Integrated evacuation planning for jurisdictions and for individuals with access and functional needs the Emergency Preparedness Guideline and toolkit for Individuals with Disabilities that was actually developed in partnership with California Department of Rehabilitation and California Department of Aging.

It describes actions and considerations individuals with disabilities and older adults can use to increase their preparedness before, during and after disasters. All these guides are available in many languages. We've also developed Active Shooter Awareness Guidance. This is to help ensure individuals who of course cannot necessarily run during, run, hide, fight are still aware of what to do and how to maintain their safety.

Also developed an Emergency Preparedness guide for older adults, people with disabilities and people with access and functional needs that's to provide them with the tools to stay safe before, during and after events and again available in multiple languages.

In response to an identified best practice and requests from local governments, we're we also created a jurisdictional guide for the development of an Access and Functional Needs Advisory Committee. It includes a detailed approach to establishing Affront advisory committees and strategies for recruitment, orientation and onboarding of Committee Members.

One of our more recent documents this Integrated access and functional needs within large venue safety and security operations. Our state, as you know, is a major sports and recreation destination. We've got Super Bowls coming up, FIFA, World Cup, Winter Olympics, X Games, Paralympics.

So this guide is intended to support large venue operators with guidance, best practice and informational resources to integrate access and functional needs into their security operations and to better the safety of all guests pursuant to CSA's audit and ensuing legislation.

Galloway is developed in collaboration with county, cities and special districts the California Statewide Alert and Warning Guidelines, which includes guidance for jurisdictions and designated alerting authorities to create accessible alert and warning programs. The guidelines address federal, state and local roles and responsibilities on when and how to issue a public alert or warning.

It details methods and technologies, alerting, coordination, best practices, training Requirements and contains an entire section on AFN considerations. Calories recently utilized the guidelines and provided alert and warning backup assistance to LA County during the 2025 fires as specified within the 7.2 section of the Alert Warning Guidelines.

I know we're getting close to the end of our time, but I hope you'll indulge me. I'd like to talk about some of the training courses and the planning that we've done both at the state level and with local jurisdictions.

In in addition to the plethora of guidance that Vance just talked about, we have created with Vance's team and my California Specialized Training Institute, or csti, many training courses for public safety professionals, emergency managers and other local government leaders and disaster volunteers.

Most recently, we've published four courses in creating accessible PDF documents, Forms, Office documents, and Social Media. That last one teaches how to create and post accessible social media content that can be accessed using assistive devices such as screen readers. Our foundational course is Integrating Access and Functional Needs into Emergency Management.

This is an in person training course provided for emergency managers, first responders and community partners to give them the skills and knowledge to plan, prepare, respond and recover in inclusive ways. Then we have a series of online inclusive courses such as Inclusive Evacuation and Transportation, Inclusive Communications and Inclusive Sheltering plans and Operations.

We also have a training and credentialing program in Disaster Response Interpreter Program the DRI program trains and credentials certified sign language interpreters to provide services before, during and after disasters. It emphasizes emergency response and recovery activities and terminology and provides practice opportunities for press conferences, shelters and other public events.

In partnership with the deaf and hard of hearing community, Cal OES has hosted over 15 training deliveries for interpreters throughout the state. CSDI has also created a series of eight online courses for Community Emergency Response Teams or CERT. There's over 500 CERT teams across the State of California, many in your jurisdictions.

And then finally, to go with the alert and warning guidelines that Vance talked about, we also have an online alert and warning training for alerting authorities. Those are the folks that actually issue the alerts. It emphasizes a comprehensive approach. It covers techniques, technological advancements and diverse communication strategies.

The process of acquiring and utilizing the Integrated Public Alert Warning System Systems or ipaws. That's the federal system and how to create accessible alert and warning programs. It works together with that library of multi language emergency notifications required by Senator Limon's legislation.

In addition to our guidance and training resources, we've also taken a comprehensive look at our state emergency plan.

Since 2017, we have integrated AFN considerations throughout the document, but our 2024 version that the Auditor mentioned has taken an even closer look, including more information regarding the diversity of California's population, use of emerging technology, science and research, climate driven and human caused Impacts equity priority communities and cultural competence and consistent and inclusive public messaging.

We had several interactions with the with Vance's AFN Comm Advisory Committee in this latest update of our state emergency plan. They've reviewed and provided input on both of our working drafts.

Perhaps one of our best interactions with local emergency managers and local emergency operations plans has resulted as discussed from the recommendations of this audit and the ensuing legislation that we've seen and and I honestly say there was probably some angst when the law went into place, but it has turned out to be an incredible benefit both to the local and the state government when in regards to emergency planning, we're required to review all 58 county emergency operation plans or I'll call them EOPS from this point forward incrementally over the next six years, a minimum of 10 per year.

During that process, Vance's office does a full AFN review on all eops, which includes bringing in consultants with lived experience to support the process. And then there's an extra step.

If an AFN consultation is requested by the local jurisdiction, then Vance does an in person meeting with the county to discuss their recommendations and other resources and best practices they can utilize during the planning. So we've done 32 county EOP reviews and out of those, 20 of the local jurisdictions have requested that additional AFN consultation.

We also do cultural competency reviews and consultations upon request and that has also been very well received by the counties. Finally, we have entrance and exit interviews with the jurisdictions in addition to any requested consultations to ensure the entire process from start to finish is upon positive experience, interactive and helpful to the jurisdiction.

We, we've gotten a lot of positive feedback from this process from the counties. In many cases the counties have been in the process of updating their eops. At the time that they went through the review with us, they found that extremely helpful.

They also sometimes they give us old eops to review and we have had a lot of recommendations for them to to implement to get those up to speed. We're currently finishing Monterey in Senator Laird's jurisdiction. This, this next couple of weeks we're going to have our exit interview with them.

So I have nothing specific to say until that happens, but Cal OES is in leads the nation in inclusive planning and serves as the gold standard for integrated emergency management. Why do I say that? Because FEMA is sharing our AFN guidance with other states and territories as national best practices.

But each subsequent disaster tries us all over again. And as we sit here, as you've mentioned, we have the Issue of Los Angeles recovering from a tragic wildfire. Wildfires. The Priority Populations Task Force is still meeting. They're standing in the gap for thousands of individuals and families.

Vance has been down to the disaster recovery centers, the joint field office. He makes sure that they're accessible and welcoming. New best practices are being documented right now through this particular disaster. I'm sure we'll have more to share in the coming months and years.

But thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to talk with you today.

Thank you, Ms. Nazura and Mr. Taylor, for, for your comments as well. Really appreciate you being here with the Auditor to discuss this. And I'm going to go to a similar vein of questioning that I had for the Auditor, which is we took. The state took a number of actions after these horrific wildfires in 2017 and 2018.

It resulted in recommendations which Cal OES has implemented, many of them legislation which passed that hopefully would have addressed many of the issues. Unfortunately. Fast forward to the latest fires and you have really heartbreaking accounts of folks with disabilities and functional needs not making it out of their homes and perishing.

One in Altadena and the Eaton fire in particular was a dad and a son who. The son was bedridden. The dad stayed by his side and could not get him out. And unfortunately they perished.

And there's a lot of theories as to whether there was any sort of transportation to get them out, whether they knew that the fire was coming in time.

And so let me go back to my question for the Auditor, which is, do you actually think that all the trainings and everything you just outlined that Cal OES is doing, and even the establishment of an office that is looking at this, is it actually working?

If the fires that we just saw saw a disproportionate effect on the Members which all of this is supposedly protecting.

And has there been improvement? I would say absolutely. If you look at, Even in my 10 years here where things weren't where things are, there has been consistent and oftentimes incredible improvement. California leads the nation on this front, and that's great. Does that mean that we're there? We're not. We're not ready to hang the mission Accomplished banner.

We have not, quote, arrived. We've done a lot, but a lot still needs to be done. I think with some of these disasters, it's really important to take a step back and say, okay, well, how could we have seen even greater impact in terms of lessening loss of human life or human suffering?

And I think that there's a Lot of accountability and responsibility and work that can be done on multiple fronts. I think as government, we need to stretch, right? We need to do more.

It's not enough to have agreements in place with accessible transportation providers just within your jurisdiction, because the reality is there's not a single jurisdiction in the state that has enough accessible transportation resources to serve everybody that's going to need it during an event. And so you've got to have agreements in place with surrounding jurisdictions as well.

That's how you get surge capacity. We see the role of community based organizations. They play an essential part that I think they can stretch and do more to help create a culture of preparedness among the communities they serve.

I also think as individuals with access and functional needs, each of us have a different capability or capacity to prepare. But there's probably more that we could be doing than that. We are. I was recently at a meeting with the State Council Developmental Disabilities and I asked how many people here have signed up for emergency alerts.

Not a lot of hands went up. How many people have a personal evacuation plan where you've outlined? These are the five people I can call during an event that are going to help me get out. Not a lot of hands went up.

And so it seems to me that on all fronts we can do more and we should do more. I think the Legislature has taken some proactive action. I know things are coming up already to address that, and that's important.

And then I also think that there is the very difficult reality that when you've got winds going 100 miles an hour, it's very difficult to do as much as you want to do when a fire is burning at the rate that it's consuming a football field a second.

So if we can all stretch, if we can all come together as a whole community, then we will do better. I don't know that we ever get risk down to zero, but we'll do better. And it takes all community to help the whole community.

Can I ask a follow up on that you had mentioned, and I appreciate everything you just said and I agree, I agree with most of it. You had mentioned that Cal OES was providing backup assistance, for example, to Los Angeles County during the most recent fires.

And I don't know what backup assistance means, but as I mentioned before, and as many accounts in the media have outlined, half of the City of the community of Altadena did not get emergency notifications.

And if there was backup assistance from Cal oes, why don't we have measures in place in every county in Every jurisdiction where if the county falters, if they trip up, we aren't there to actually provide a fail safe so that we are not relying merely on local control and local government to do a really something that would just be table stakes in an emergency, which is telling people that a flood or a fire is coming.

That is just a very bare minimum thing that I would think that we would provide the state Cal OES would provide a backup plan when the county and or the city doesn't actually do that.

So I think it's important to look at the timeline on that. Once alerts, let's say maybe don't go out, or when there is a technical issue, then the local jurisdiction can ask Cal OS to support its efforts.

Cal OS has the capability to do that, but I don't expect we'll step in front of the jurisdiction to do that during a real time event. So unfortunately it's sort of the. And maybe this isn't the best analogy. I don't know. We'll try and see how it goes.

Hey, I want to start my car and it didn't turn on. Can I borrow your car? Right, it's until I start the car, it doesn't turn on that I know I need your assistance. You're there to support me. But it's not a fail safe where a switch instantly flips and these things get turned on.

I think at the local level and at every level, we have to exercise our systems. We have to test and retest so that we're not caught unaware, so that we're not in a real event or situation and finding ourselves with the inability to provide real effective accessible messaging before, during, after these events.

So yeah, we can provide the capability, but we have to know that that support's needed first.

I do think that you have just highlighted one of the real critical issues that we have to really drill down on, which is this dynamic between local government remaining in charge and the state really taking a secondary role and how the redundancies can actually be put in place to make sure while allowing the local jurisdictions to remain in control, there are redundancies that we as we have seen in many different industries in many different capacities.

Your analogy, for example, to the extent that my car doesn't start up, I don't die. If we are in a situation where my car doesn't start up and I die, there should be redundancies where that car starts up within seconds.

And so I do think that we respect our local partners, we respect our local personnel, but we as a State have a duty to make sure that when they trip, we catch them. And, and I don't think we're doing that. I don't think that we're doing that very well. And we need to do better.

We need to stretch. And I do think, for example, the fact is that we've only been to 32 counties to actually look at their plans. That's 26 counties that we haven't been to. That's hundreds of thousands if not millions of folks with vulnerabilities who still may be in harm's way.

So I do think that this audit and the hearing being so long after is some way fortuitous because we can actually see the results and whether they're working or not.

And I do think that there's going to be a lot of conversations about these latest fires and whether the implementation of a lot of these measures really are robust enough. So yes, we're going to go to. Comment real quick on your. I will, Mr.

Taylor, just really quickly for I was going to go to Senate Ransom, but do you have a follow up to something?

I have a follow up comment and then I apologize because I have to go and my follow up comment is, is we are talking about these as if the circumstances around them are fixed or they're not developments.

And so when the Paho levy broke in the 1990s, I was a county manager and because I spoke Spanish, I went and stayed overnight with hundreds of people that were evacuated for a period of time.

And then when the levy broke two years ago and hundreds and hundreds of people were evacuated in my district, it turned out that the premier language were indigenous language of Mistec and other things in that providing Spanish language translators was not adequate in the evacuation center.

And that was a change that had happened in that period of time in a way that I don't think even the local governments picked up on it the same way. And so part of the difficulty in all this is trying to figure out how to adaptively manage these disasters for many, many changing circumstances.

So thank you for allowing me to make the comment. I apologize I have to step out.

Appreciate that. Mr. Chair. Mr. Taylor, you had a follow up.

I apologize. Go ahead.

Zero, so it's currently stated Calriss is required to review EOPS upon their next update. So of the counties, the 32 that you indicated, those are 32 counties that have updated their plans, which is why we we've gotten to review them. Understood.

And then of course we issue recommendations which under the law as was passed, they're legally Required to address, not implement, but address. And to the extent that they do that, of course we're not a regulatory agency, so we don't.

But there's no ability on our part to circle back and say, they show us what you did on X, Y or Z.

Understood. Thank you. Were you finished? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. I was saying thank you as well. Okay. Thank you, Senator Ransom.

Awesome. So I thank you so much for your presentation of information. My concern is it sounds like you've made a huge investments in training. It sounds like everyone's heart is in the right place.

But I'm not hearing like the accountability for the local agencies and quite honestly, I'm not hearing that we are prioritizing our response as a state through our emergency services operation. To your analogy regarding, you know, if your car breaks down, well, we know that a lot of these places have cars that are not dependable. Right.

So if we know that, why don't we already have a car prepared to go out? Because we know this is a situation. So simultaneous resources sounds like something we need to prepare for. And whether we need to work with those local jurisdictions. It doesn't matter if people are getting redundant information.

It matters that they're getting accurate information and they're getting information. I'd rather you get something twice than get nothing at all. So I do think that we really need to readdress and reassess how we are currently responding to the situation because these are matters of life and death.

To your point about, you know, if the wind is blowing, it's hard to respond. We have weather services, we have warnings. We know these things are coming. We know that we can depend on our natural disasters. And so we have pre positioned, you know, opportunities.

When it comes to fire services, we should have pre positioned language services, we should have pre positioned messages and alerts to go out. We really have to be more accountable and really use those investments that we've made and make sure that they are coming through. My question would be all of these trainings.

It looks sounds like we have really been very thoughtful in the trainings. Are these required trainings or are these just like, hey, if you happen to be on our website, here's a little information for you.

What is the responsibility that we have to these local jurisdictions to make sure that they are trained and pushing this information down to their teams? That's my first question.

So with regard to the training, there is no requirement that the emergency personnel in the emergency operations centers be credentialed at any particular level, although with FEMA guidance that is coming out with one of their emergency management performance grants, there is the requirement to step that up. We do have credentialing programs. We have three types.

Type three being the lowest up to type one, we have emergency management certificates. And so these trainings then would feed into those certificates and credentials. But again, not being a regulatory agency, we cannot tell the local jurisdictions, you must achieve XYZ by such and such a time.

Thank you. So it's really concerning. You know, you have all these resources, all this information, and no one's required to even adopt the, the information. So that's clearly an opportunity for our state and something that we need to look into. We know that, you know, folks are not compliant with their plans.

Can you describe the process that we receive those plans? Like what is the process to ensure that we're getting them and how, what can we do to change the fact that there are folks that are not implementing these plans? Have you thought about that already?

Well, so the recent legislation that requires Cal OES to review the plans gives us until 2028 to get through all 58. So we are on target for that. We work with the local jurisdictions per the legislation. If we were to start with jurisdictions in high fire wildfire hazards severity, hazard areas, and we, we've done that now.

And so each January, December, January, we develop a list in coordination with the local jurisdictions of who our next 10 will minimum 10. We don't, we, sometimes we do 12, but we, we work with them. We set out a timeline because we need to stagger them throughout the year.

We don't have the resources to do 10 at a time, but we work through them together with them. And it's, it's been a very, a very thoughtful process with the local jurisdictions and we have found them to be very willing to take our recommendations and implement them.

So I think there has been a very positive change that has occurred in recent years with the local emergency operations plans.

Thank you. And I know you all keep mentioning you're not a regulatory agency. I totally get that. But there's still an opportunity to provide like some oversight. And I've heard the word guidance several times. Like what is the, the best guidance or oversight tool that you have in order to ensure compliance is a question that I have.

And 2028 is a long time. I know that based on your resources, that's the best you can do. But we have a lot of expectation that these disasters and these, these events are going to happen between now and 2028. And so is there. So this is two questions. What's your best tool for, you know, compliance?

And then is there a way that we are pushing all of these counties regardless to whether they're in your 10 or not, to get these emergency plans submitted? Where do those submissions go? Like can I go on on your website right now and find every county's plan and whether it's up to date? Two questions. Sorry about that.

Yes, I do believe that we have links from our website to all 58 webs emergency management websites where the EOPS should be posted. But they aren't all publicly posted.

So I have to go to the each separate website or are they all on your website? Here's all emergency plans throughout our state. If I wanted to audit them myself.

I will have to check. I don't, I don't know that we have a webpage that links to every single plan. We link to every single county emergency management page.

Got it.

But as I said, not all counties post their eops on their emergency management page.

Okay. And in regards to your biggest oversight tool, what do you have in your toolbox?

So as far as as guidance that we use, we start with the FEMA comprehensive planning guide 101. We also use state law. We use our best practices that was developed in coordination with the 58 counties and the Access and Functional Needs Advisory Committee.

As far as like tools for compliance, we as I mentioned earlier, the Emergency Management Performance Grant, that's a FEMA grant, comes to the Cal OES is the state administrator for that. It is passed through down to the counties. It now has requirements, they're called national qualification standards that require certain professional standards across emergency management personnel.

And so that grant is tied to their compliance with those standards.

Okay, great. So now their funding is tied to the compliance with the standards. And then what else happens if I'm not following state law and following your best guidance, what happens to me other. So that's you've given one example, but what else happens to me?

I'm a county who's like, you know what, I don't have time for this planning thing. What are you going to do to me for not following state law? Like who are you reporting this to?

We're reporting back to the local jurisdiction. And so when at some point they're going to have to go before their governing board with their emergency operation plan for approval and they are going to have to answer to their board that they've met all of these requirements.

In our exit interviews we provide a report to the local jurisdictions with Our recommendations, including where we we can show that they are not in compliance with state law and those are the top priorities for them to remediate before, well, during their update process, before they go to their governing body.

And in your best estimate when you do that, like how responsive, if you had to give a percentage, best guess scale of 1 to 10, something like how responsive are they to this, this information, this pushback that they're getting, I.

Would have to say some anecdotally when I hear from them, very high percentage are very. In some cases it's zero, we didn't know that. And in some cases it's zero, we knew that to be the case, but we haven't had the resources or we didn't know how to do it.

Like one of our top recommendations is developing an AFN Advisory Committee for the local jurisdiction and then using them before, during and after so that they're a part of the planning process, not reading the document after it's been prepared.

And then we kind of follow that up with we send in our big guns here to go and tell them how to actually create the AFN Committee. In a lot of cases they wanted to, they just didn't know how to get started.

And then with the practical guidance that Vance's team is able to provide, we've seen many of these advisory committees pop up. Awesome.

Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Madam Chair. Any other questions before we move on to the last panel? See none. Thank you to the Auditor to OES for both of your comments and the answers to the questions. And we look forward to working with you on follow up. So appreciate it. We're bringing up our third panel as we speak.

And that will be Dave Lindemann, Chair of the California Commission on Aging, Jim Frazier, Director of Public Policy with the ARC of California, and Noe Paramo, who is the project Director for California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation.

And Mr. Lindemann, the time is yours. Five minutes if you could. But if you need more time, just let me know.

Chairman Harabedian and esteemed Members of the Committee, My name is Dr. David Lindemann. I'm chair of the California Commission on Aging. I want to thank you for this opportunity to discuss the impact of disasters on older adults and persons with disabilities.

The recent fires in the Los Angeles area have underscored the devastating and disproportionate effects that disasters have on older adults.

As Chair Ramson has mentioned, of the 25 victims that have been identified, almost all were either over the age of 65 or had a disability, a phenomena which unfortunately has become all too common now throughout California as we have increased number of natural disasters. The initial minutes of a natural disaster can be critical to survivability.

Challenges facing older adults make these crucial moments even more perilous. Mobility can become limited with age, and as a result, older adults are often hindered in their ability to evacuate the residents in a timely manner. They may have a limited ability to travel outside of their home or may rely on family for transportation.

This is especially critical concern given that over 1.3 million older Californians live alone. These individuals are forced to be completely self reliant in the midst of evacuation orders. Struggles with mobility can prove fatal if transportation alternatives are lacking. Challenges continue for older adults transported to emergency shelters.

Shelters are often not prepared to care for the specialized needs of older adults, especially those who are being displaced from assisted living or skilled nursing facilities. Oftentimes, they lack the medical supplies necessary to provide specialized care for these individuals.

In addition, they have Medical information is often lacking, and those with cognitive impairment or dementia are particularly vulnerable given their difficulty in making their needs known even when medical staff are assisting them.

Efforts have been made in other states and some localities to create voluntary registries to provide shelters with information on residents who have specialized needs so that adequate resources will be available.

Such registries, however, have faced problems related to outdated and unreliable data, a Low rate of participation, and criticism that the registry gives participants the false impression that they will be prioritized in the event of a disaster.

Reliable information is critical in emergencies, but California must take the lessons learned from these attempts and work toward a system that can aid shelters and medical staff with reliable data that also protects the individual's sensitive information. For older adults, struggles can often continue even after the disaster has concluded.

The tragedy of losing one's home is difficult for any individual, but for older adults, many lose financial equity that has kept them afloat older adults described as quote, unquote, house rich and income poor struggle to find affordable housing in markets already strained by the state's housing crisis.

Recent analysis by the Washington Post found a 20% spike in rents in Los Angeles County following the wildfires. The problem is compounded for those who require long term care and assisted living or skilled nursing facilities that have been destroyed by the disaster.

For these individuals, the need for assistance with daily living makes the search for a new facility that is accepting new residents all the more difficult, while facilities are overwhelmed by the task of transferring their residents to new accommodations.

Such problems are likely to continue in the aftermath of the fires in Los Angeles, with the effects being felt across the state. The campfire in 2018 destroyed 90% of the housing in Paradise, a town where 35% of the population was over the age of 60.

In the following year, 1/3 of HUD assisted households in paradise had left Butte County for other parts of the state, and as of 2023, only a third of paradise has been repopulated. State agencies therefore must be highly involved in the coordination of services for those displaced, particularly older adults.

It's also important that we not lose focus on older adults that are indirectly affected by disasters. Wildfires, extreme heat events, earthquakes, winter storms can lead to power shutoffs that have a drastic impact on older adults who rely on powered medical devices, H VAC systems and other critical infrastructure necessary for their well being.

The loss of housing for others may lead to an older adult's landlord illegally raising rents to cash in on a surging housing shortage. Protections need to be enforced to ensure that those beyond the immediate disaster area are not having disruptions in services or are being unfairly treated.

Finally, the California Commission on Aging is holding a meeting this May in Los Angeles to continue this discussion with local providers and impacted community Members with the intent of identifying possible legislative or regulatory remedies to better be prepared for our next catastrophe. We will share those recommendations with the Legislative Audit Committee.

So thank you very much again for this opportunity to testify and I welcome any questions.

Thank you, Dr. Lindemann. Mr. Frazier, go ahead.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Thank you. Mr. Chair. Jim Frazier with the Arc of California, Director of Public Policy, also with the United Cerebral Palsy of California. Thank you for the opportunity today to come and share with you our population's view of how we are being responded to in a catastrophe.

I served on the California Commission for Disability Access when I was in the Legislature. We have done profound work in accessibility for the disabled, but we haven't done a Good job on the egress component of any kind of. Component of any kind of catastrophe or.

Mr. Frazier, just one Sec. I don't think we can hear you very well. I don't know if it's the microphone. Or if it's just the position me, but thank you.

Can you hear me now? Thank you very much. So one of the things that I had mentioned, we've done a wonderful job on creating access for the people with disabilities, but we haven't done a good job on egress of natural disasters, catastrophes, active shooter, you name it.

And what I will share with you is in our capacity with our population, there are so many different complex challenges. We have physical disabilities, which you can see physical challenges, but you also have the unseen challenges with the intellectual and developmentally disabled. So those complex needs need to be addressed in certain fashions.

One of those components can be early on in an individual's. When they're young, their Iep, how they can be assessed and what their needs are to be able to facilitate in an emergency their ability to be brought to safety as an adult. It's an ipp.

Ipp, which means that they would have their plan in place and people would be assigned in that manner to facilitate their ability to be brought to safety. The registry is a phenomenal idea. It needs to be enhanced to a point where all jurisdictions have the ability to respond from that registry in that component.

One of the things I'll share with you is in special education throughout the schools in California, the special education classes don't have an emergency evacuation plan. They don't have it facilitated. It is just like any other atypical student in a. In an earthquake, it's drop and take cover, which many of our population cannot do.

An active shooter is fight, flee, you know, the fight, or hide, fight and flee, or, you know, all of those. Our population can't do that. And so there needs to be a different kind of aspect taken with our population's needs. Now, I did.

We did the ARC of California not to jump in. Mr. Frazier, I think that microphone is not actually working. If you wouldn't mind moving over to. And it's hard in the room. But this is being televised, so we want to make sure that your testimony is being picked up. Thank you.

I appreciate that. Much better. This one was in budget cuts. Thank you so much. One of the things also, as I mentioned, in the schools is the no preparedness plan for our special education students.

The ARC of California sponsored SB 383 Portantino to be able to mandate that in all schools to prepare that option for the students to be able to have a plan for evacuation preparedness. Unfortunately, it was watered down through the process where pretty much not worth a paper was written on when it was done.

And what we're hoping for is a collaboration from the Department of Education and OES to provide a study to be able to put the protocols in place to be able to go that route. Unfortunately, we have put that request in, but that takes money to do these studies. I think it was approximately $50,000.

That's $50,000 that could protect thousands of special education students in California. But we couldn't get it funded. So one of the biggest things that we have to prioritize is our, our vulnerable population safety.

We are where the we're their caretakers and we need to be able to make sure that they have the opportunity to live a fulfilled life as we do and not live in constant fear. That's one of the things that you folks and I appreciate you taking this upon yourself to work through this project.

But one of the things, as I mentioned as my former life here in the Legislature, all of the things that we need to do a take and make it a priority and then also funding it, not only a mandate, but funding the. The process and follow through with that. I again, thank you so much for taking this.

Let me take this opportunity to share with you our concerns.

Thank you, Mr. Frazier and thank you of course for your service and what you're doing now. And then we'll move on to Mr. Paramo who you have five minutes and then we will field questions to the whole panel.

Thank you. Chair Harabedian and Members. Good morning. My name is Noah Padamo. I'm with California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My comments are on language proficiency among immigrant rural farm worker communities.

First, the audit accurately represents the status in 2019 of not being equitably prepared to protect our residents that are limited English proficient. A recent study in San Luis Obispo county in January 2025 showed that 69% speak a language other than English, Spanish being predominant and indigenous. It's the majority is Misteco.

The study also identified emergency preparedness slow reports findings Undocumented immigrants are disproportionately affected by natural disasters face barriers in accessing relief services. It's been five years since the report of 2019. Cal OES has listened. They've developed and implemented a program and it's called Listos California.

It vastly addressed language access by developing printed materials and video for example, for indigenous farm workers in collaboration with community based organizations, disaster preparedness information was done in Spanish Misteco, Triki, Punjabi languages. Furthermore, the LISTOS program is partnered with community based organizations as trusted messengers conducting outreach and education in their communities.

This program should be maintained and elevated and expanded so that it continues to prove success and outreach to our communities. At the local level, emergency preparedness services still have room to improve though.

California Rural Legal Assistance foundation staff has experiences with several natural disasters, including the 2022-2023 storms that impacted the Central Valley's limited English language proficient farmworker families.

As we saw in Planada and also Pajaro Chevrolet's outreach staff in Central Valley counties, we witnessed residents stories, observations and research that tell us the challenges remain when it comes to preparedness because farmworkers and their families tell us improvement on language access is needed.

Several points Lack of adequate preparedness Many farmworkers live in geographically isolated rural areas that lack the preparedness for natural disasters when they have to suddenly leave their home due to flooding, for example, with little time to gather their belongings or their documents, adding to it the need for transportation and shelter concerns. Where will they go?

Who will they live with? Language Barriers at Support center should you get there Staff not being adequately linguistically competent to speak in the person's language and understand the family's need if they're unable to read and write in Spanish or speak an indigenous language. As I said, Misteco, Tricky or Zapoteco. At the county level, barriers exist on technology.

Residents have limited language proficiency and technology are challenges. Websites information is mostly displayed in English, making our staff having to help to translate that document for our clients. Thus, a person with limited technology knowledge and limited English proficiency makes it twice as difficult to access and navigate.

Even with translation options, the words used are not understandable due to Low literacy levels and almost impossible for indigenous languages.

Navigation and safety net resources result in many residents being unaware of the resources that exist if they do at all, such as food assistance, clothing, utility and financial assistance and they need that in their language so they can get that safety net support.

You add that physical and mental health as related issues where farmworker families need help with language assistance, particularly pregnant mothers exposure to mold and stress with having to leave your home and lose work, let alone the students losing valuable education time. There are disparities in the counties.

Counties were poorly prepared to help vulnerable populations and the gaps existed in language access. We also observed that larger counties were likely to be better prepared with more CBOS and more resources for populations than smaller counties. We do have tools, however, for recovery of vulnerable populations. With this limited English proficient.

In 20232024 UC Merced's Community labor center led a study on planada storm impacts. The result was the development of a toolkit to help vulnerable communities recover from disasters. A step by step tool, I think. One more minute, Chair, and if that's the time going off, go ahead.

No, this is meant as a supplement and not to replace local government's obligation to help populations with limited language access. Finally, perhaps we should analyze recent legislation. AB262 has been introduced seeking to establish the California Local Assistance Program to help local communities prepare.

These local governments would then need to work in partnership with the state and local community based organizations as trusted messengers to deliver culturally and linguistically competent emergency services to our vulnerable populations that are impacted by natural disasters. This would close the gap through proper planning and sound policies. Thank you very much for your consideration and time today.

Thank you. And thank you to all three of our witnesses and for the information that was provided. And I'm going to open it up to my Members, see if there's any questions. Senator Cortese, go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you all for being here. And since I didn't speak earlier, thank you to the previous panels as well. Mr. Frazier, you really hit on something that's been a concern for me listening to all this, but especially with regard to older adults, which is the egress issue.

And I'll make it a little bit personal, but just to make the point, my father, who served here for 16 years as a state Legislature Legislator back in the day, 92 years old, now lives in a retirement community. 55 and older, up against a WUI area. There's several thousand people that live in that community. He's pretty mobile.

He can still drive. But during the 2020 fire, the SCU and CZU fires that surrounded Santa Clara County along the Diablo Range, that range backs up right against his retirement community. I was with the Santa Clara County fire chief looking at heat maps daily. And in the evening, that was the year I was campaigning to come here.

One of those evenings, the fire chief showed me on the heat map where the fire was. And it was on the ridge right behind that retirement community. East, directly east, if that helps at all. And the way he described it was one westerly wind shift back to the meteorology that people were bringing up earlier.

And that community will have to evacuate. My question to him was, how do you. How do they evacuate? There's going to be a percentage of people who are mobile enough to get out of there. There's a one way driveway getting out of the community and only limited physical egress getting out of the community.

Obviously if there's a wind behind, a fire that shifted in the first place can be moving pretty fast. We saw that with the recent Los Angeles fires, of course, at a larger scale.

His recommendation back to my father just a few days ago was why isn't there legislation requiring all of those folks to be identified, especially those who were elderly octogenarians, folks like him, to make sure that their getting a knock on the door or an electronic notification?

I think one of the great gaps of course we have, and it's been touched upon today, is the fact that we have gaps all over the place, especially in those particular areas that are most vulnerable and amongst some of those folks who are most vulnerable in terms of Internet access, in terms of WI fi, lack of WI fi, lack of cellular towers or cellular towers that can go in a straight line, of course, but they can't go up and down, you know, through these pockets and canyons where people live.

I don't want to throw too many issues out there. I want to come back to egress I'm not seeing. In my own district which stretches all the way East. I have 80% of the City of San Jose, third largest city in in the state.

But I also have this Diablo Range area that goes all the way from the city limits of San Jose to the Stanislaus border and the Alameda County border.

If we were to pull in that range Association, not just the folks in the suburban area where the retirement community that I'm talking about, but everyone east of them, they would testify here today without question that they have never been asked what the best way to contact them is.

They've never been told who would give them that kind of direction. Again, many of them are on a State Highway 130, which is a two lane road, which to say would be a massive understatement to say it has limited access but has jurisdiction by Highway Patrol because it's a state highway.

But their jurisdiction where their properties are is the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department or the Alameda County Sheriff's Department or the Stanislaus County Sheriff's Department. And frankly in those fires, Santa Clara County in the middle of COVID was a little late setting up an Office of Emergency Services to, you know, to respond to anybody.

Is that the kind of egress issues that you're talking about in the Kind of sort of symptoms. I'm just concerned that if we're going to make progress on this, and I really appreciate the progress that's been made specifically with the Ada community.

But the elderly community, which is doubling down over the next 10 years, is, I think, equally vulnerable and maybe more so because there's, again, a tendency to move into these more secluded areas, more isolated areas, and then not have any information as to how to get out. Maybe they got some kind of a plan.

But I'm talking about real time, and I wanted to respect the first speaker talking about, you know, how we deal with folks afterwards. That's a huge other issue. I'm not going to try to ask a question about today, the resiliency factor, but how do we communicate with folks like that?

Real time, as the winds are shifting, as the fires are moving, clearly we know where they are. It's, it's, it's actuarial information. You know, we know where people are 55 and older, 65 and older, 75 and older. It sounds like that's a huge part of your work. Now, Mr. Frazier, just any, any comment on that?

If, if not, I'll just leave it out there as a comment of my concerns. But I'd be interested, especially with your background as to what's the, you know, put aside my father's ideas for a minute.

What's, what's the legislative path to making sure that we're actually, you know, putting our best foot forward here and making some progress in that regard.

Thank you for that question, Senator. I will, I will say honestly, again, we did a wonderful job on accommodating Ada access, but we stopped there, and now we have to pick up the ball and continue the process. As you mentioned, in, in rural areas, it's going to be paramount about how we get the, the people to safety.

In 2021. I did seven bills after the, the fires in Napa and Sonoma with prescriptive targeting from satellite targeting for, for wildfires and alerts, and all seven bills got killed. Okay.

We worked with all the state agencies, these were all kind of jointed bills to be able to, to help the state agencies accommodate what they needed to be prepared and to be earlier responders to these emergencies.

We have to be able to talk to our mobility experts on how to be able to assess who needs what and when and how to accommodate these, these needs. When we, when we talk to these folks, it's all about prioritizing an area where, as you mentioned, one in and one out.

Paradise was a great Example of that with very limited egress. So it is talking and getting the people that are a lot smarter than myself in a room with a whiteboard and putting up all of the options and the complexities that it would take.

But again, when you talk about the disabled, the sensory issues, the complexity of, of, of, you know, just the agility or you know, are they ambulatory or they non ambulatory, that's a factor also in evacuating somebody, having the ability to put somebody who is in a wheelchair in a vehicle that can accommodate that.

It's just about being able to say, how far are we willing to go to save the people we care for?

May I just follow up with just a single question? How much do you and anyone may respond to this? I know Mr. Frazier's got some experience politically in the field.

How important is it to go talk to those folks whether they have a plan in place or not, to bring them into the circle of pre planning for egress?

Absolutely essential. They're the experts.

Thank you. Thank you, Senator Cortese. Dr.

Lindemann, did you want to, if. I may, to pick up on that? And thank you Mr. Frazier, for that excellent point. I'd like to share that just in my day job, I'm at UC Berkeley at the Center for Information Technology Research in the interests of Society, Multi campus UC public program.

And I would like to reinforce the importance of what we have available to us. We have world class institutes for transportation studies at UC Davis, UC Berkeley, our other campuses that can address many of these issues. We are a technology rich state.

We have terrible diversity or just between what we do have and for certain individuals or not. But we do have these technologies that could help in that area, even as we're adding new drone research, et cetera.

One of the other things though that I heard earlier, and I think it's important to comment on, was the amount of time that it's taking to do preparation for plans or to review plans throughout the state.

Generative AI and our ability to use large language models can immediately allow us to scan all of those plans, identify gaps, create consistency, look for core information, and then with natural language processing, scan them as to what is missing, what needs to be added.

I think on a prophylactic basis, there are so many more issues that California can be national leader in to help protect all of our vulnerable populations. And finally a similar one. We have the opportunity now when we were in the pandemic, we were working with bringing resources to individuals in affordable housing communities, assisted living, who were Isolated.

We had desperate times. We were reaching individuals who in those communities there were at least 10 languages being spoken. Three years ago we had tremendous problems which still continue as you've heard beautifully today, again with new translation capabilities. Many of those messages we heard about needing earlier today could be created immediately with these new devices.

Even though again, we have lack of access to certain technology, the ability to add that and make sure that as many individuals receive current, up to date, culturally relevant information is, is within our grasp. So again, we encourage the Legislature to consider all these opportunities that California has it before it to help us avoid and protect individuals.

Thank you.

Thank you for that, Senator Archuleta.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Gentlemen, thank you for being here with us. And all of us agree on some of the things you stated and of course our heart is with you and those you love and you serve.

You know, obviously the report that we had that goes back to 2019 indicates we have a lot of growing to do and a lot of different things that we have to improve. But from then to now, I think we have improved.

I was there in Southern California in the Los Angeles area to view the fires that were there off Pasadena, Altadena and the Palisades and so on, and, and I knew our response was there. The winds were something that we all just couldn't handle, no doubt. But some of the things you butt out are so true.

I think that we have to have something to alert people in Spanish, no doubt, and now the culture with Vietnamese and Taiwanese and all kinds of different languages. But we also have to think about the young kids that are still in school because when I was there, I witnessed the schools that were burned to the ground.

And you know, the fatalities were none from the schools, but as you had mentioned, our elderly, so many were lost because of their age and inability to move.

But I think that hopefully you'll support us and our support to get perhaps the elderly registered with the local fire Department, the elderly to be registered with the local Police Department, and certainly with the sheriff of the County of La in my county.

If we can do that, then it's quickly noted that in these two square blocks we have five residents are over the age of 75. Hypothetically, in this square blocks we have 10 that are in their 90s. Right. At least we know that we can set some alarms out, do something. And I know we need to do that.

There's no doubt getting them in and getting them out quickly. Others are able to move. But yes, you're absolutely right.

So I think the purpose of our Meeting today is to listen to you and to shake the tree per se that we're not done preparing because according to the report, we're not adequately prepared and we have to learn from what just happened.

We have to change our way of thinking and, and think smarter and think out of the box and to understand over the next 10 years all these that you mentioned that are 65 will be 75 and 85. And we've got to do that.

So I thank you for being here and I don't have any particular questions to you because I know you don't have all the answers, but we are listening.

Thank you. Appreciate that. Senator, Couldn't agree more. And as you were speaking, we in LA County just received an emergency alert about heavy rainfall coming the next week or two.

So this is having obviously this is such a timely conversation for so many reasons, but I do want to make sure that anyone who has a question can ask our panelists before we wrap up. But I Dr. Lindemann, it really saddens me to, to think about just how, how significantly impacted our older populations are during these times.

And I think all of us have personal experiences not only with our, our communities with access and, and disability needs, but our families, our family Members. And Senator Cortese hit the nail on the head.

I mean, all of us are, are dealing with our own families that are getting older and our populations are getting older just as a matter of course. And so what do we need to do beyond all the things that you mentioned?

What are the one to two steps that we can do to protect Senator Cortese's father, everyone's family Members up here, and obviously our growing sect of 65 and older population in every community that are going to be affected by these disasters.

Thank you very much, Chairperson, for bringing all those points forward. This is a critical opportunity as well as a challenge at this point to do that. And I think you've raised it in a beautiful way and we've heard it earlier. This is a combination of government along with personal and individual support.

But it's also an issue that we're dealing with. It's not just older adults themselves, persons with disabilities, individuals in rural communities who are isolated, but it's their families, as you pointed out, family caregivers which bring together. This is a dual issue, how they can be of help, how they need to be available and supported in this area.

But it's a third area and that is our workforce. We have at this point this year we are 300,000 individuals short in terms of frontline workers to help support older adults. We don't even have workforce available, but we need to have all individuals trained be made aware of this information which you have supported so nicely.

And we have opportunities to bring forward both planning and responses that we have still to develop. I think that's the wonderful opportunity we have here in California to be in the lead of how we address these needs and can head them off. They are going to continue to come.

Thank you for that. Any other questions before we go to closing comments? Chair Ransom, do you have any closing comments?

Thank you, Chair. I just really want to thank everyone for bringing attention and information to this meeting today. This hearing was very important. It's timely for now. Although we know that this report was done, you know, several years ago.

But this is clearly the first of many steps in us really taking the lessons that we've learned so that we can address not only our aging population, not only our vulnerable population, but just our entire state. We must do that with accountability. We must do that with best practices implemented.

And it has to be a collaborative effort where we are, you know, really moving these things forwards in our cities, in our counties and here at the state. So we appreciate everyone's perspective and we know that everyone's heart's in the right place.

But it's really going to be incumbent upon all of us to continue not only this conversation, but implementing the things that will bring us the results. So thank you all for your time and attention to this today. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. At this point, I'm going to open this up for public comment. If anyone has a public comment, please approach the microphone. You will have two minutes and I do see one Member of the public coming up.

Thanks very much, Chair. This is an important hearing and I really appreciate all of your time and attention to these issues. I'm a wildfire survivor from the 2017 PGE Tubbs Fire. There are 70,000 wildfire survivors from that period of time still awaiting their payment in full from pge. After the fires, I got involved in these issues.

Former Executive Director of an independent living center. Very familiar with the challenges that we're facing here and that we're discussing in this room. I would be careful to not conflate issues that are around natural disasters with those that are impacted by utility caused wildfires.

Of course there's a lot of overlap to that, but there are some important differences between when those things occur. One is around messaging, right? And so we have our investor owned utilities that have requirements for how they message people with disabilities in the community. And then we have other responsibilities from our local governments.

We got to make sure that we're paying attention to that right now. Our utility wildfire mitigation plans don't talk to our state plans. Oftentimes, our community wildfire protection plans don't talk to either of those strategies. So these are gaps that we can fill with legislation.

Right now I just want to turn very quickly to vulnerable populations within that time period who are affected by the fires from 2015 to 2018. Last weekend I just received a call from a woman who is having lots of health issues from the fires, who had disabilities caused by the fires, and she is awaiting payment in full.

In 2019, AB 1054, legislation was passed with the promise of protecting our utility investors, protecting our utilities, and making sure that all victims were made whole. That last piece of it has not been done. And so we need to make sure that legislation this session takes care of that.

Try to rebuild and recover and pay your medical bills with 30% less, 30 seconds from your losses, compounded with other issues associated with attorney's fees.

All of these issues are now being faced in La, and we need to make sure that legisLation is being put forward to support the wildfire survivors in LA and prior survivors in Northern California. We need to make sure the legisLation is accomplishing all those things. There's ways to do that.

I would encourage you to reach out to me for ways that we can finance that through measures that have been done in the past, such as resiliency bonds, census Bill credits and other things to make sure that that 30% shortfall is, is addressed. Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you. Any other public comment and seeing none, we'll just come back and, and I just appreciate the informative discussion that we had today. And you know, I don't think a lot of people think about, for example, deferred maintenance until the bridge falls down.

And we're in a situation where a lot of folks, even throughout our state, are still not thinking about emergency preparedness even in the face of devastating wildfires.

Those of us who served in every level of government, even after many of the fires that this audit looked at, still did not do sufficient amounts of work in our local communities to prepare for the fires that just happened, for example.

And so I think that emergency preparedness and the very issues that we are talking about today, which is protecting the most vulnerable Californians, will be a topic of future legislation, of more hearings at every different level of government. And I do appreciate everything that we learned today. I want to appreciate.

Just say thank you to Auditor Parks, Mr. Harris, for conducting this work, for giving us your feedback and the recommendations. I do want to thank Cal OES, Ms. Nahura, and Mr. Taylor, for. For your honest feedback as well, and for the discussion that we had about what has been done, which has to be commended.

I do think that Cal Oes has taken great steps of addressing many of the issues that we talked about, and I think that your honesty and we have a long way to go and we need to stretch is really appreciated. And then obviously, Dr. Lindeman, Mr. Frazier, Mr.

Potomot, thank you for your guidance and your feedback as well. I think that there's a long way to go, and our job is to make sure that the state is doing everything it can to protect our residents. And I don't think that there's a silver bullet.

I do think that it's continuing to have these conversations, and I want to thank my colleagues for all their thoughtful questions and the conversation that we had. And with that, many more conversations to be had. But this hearing is concluded, so thank you.